Champions

The California Wellness Foundation is proud to present its 2010 Champions of Health Professions Diversity awardees. Each receives a cash award of $25,000 as an acknowledgment of their commitment to increasing California’s health care workforce and its diversity.

For more than three decades, Dr. Sandra P. Daley has advocated for academic enrichment programs that help disadvantaged students pursue careers in health and science. She is the associate chancellor and chief diversity officer at the University of California, San Diego (UCSD). Daley also serves as director and principal investigator for the UCSD Health Careers Opportunity Program (HCOP), which provides academic support and resources to underrepresented and low-income students beginning in the seventh grade.

Ronald D. Garcia is devoted to promoting cultural and linguistic diversity in the health professions workforce and preparing clinicians to be effective with increasingly diverse patient populations. He pioneered a nationally recognized higher education admissions procedure that looks at “distance traveled” by students in order to increase diversity in medical and health professional schools. Garcia is an assistant dean of minority affairs and program director of the Center of Excellence in Cultural Diversity at the Stanford University School of Medicine, which sponsors clinical and didactic curriculum offerings related to cultural competence and health care disparities.

Over the last 28 years, Jeffrey S. Oxendine has worked as a health executive, educator and consultant dedicated to developing and increasing diversity in the health professions. He is co-founder and president of Health Career Connection (HCC), a nonprofit that has empowered more than 900 undergraduate students in California, New England and New York to pursue health careers. Oxendine is the associate dean of public health practice and directs the Center for Public Health Practice at the University of California, Berkeley School of Public Health.

Our Mission

To protect and improve the health and wellness of the people of California by increasing access to health care, quality education, good jobs, healthy environments and safe neighborhoods.